The Readjustment Part 9

Mrs. Tiffany's first expression flooded her eyes and said, "Is there anything strange in liking you?" Her second expression set her mouth hard and said, "What is her object?" Her voice said nothing.

"And behold him now," said Judge Tiffany.

There, indeed, came Bertram Chester, visible over their garden wall as he toiled up the hen-coop sidewalk. The Judge returned to the house; Mattie Tiffany settled herself on the piazza with the preen and flutter of a female thing about to be wooed.

The Tiffany drawing-room, panelled simply in woods, furnished with the old Sturtevant mahogany, came upon Bertram Chester like a stage setting as he entered with Mrs. Tiffany. Upstage, burned a driftwood fire in a low hearth of rough bricks; Judge Tiffany sat there, in a spindle-backed chair, reading. Across a s.p.a.ce broken only by a painting, a j.a.panese print or so, and more spindle-backed chairs, Eleanor and Kate had grouped themselves by the piano. Eleanor, turning the leaves on the music-rack, looked over her shoulder at him. She was in pink that day; the tint of her gown, blending into the tint of her fresh skin, contrasted magically with the subdued background. Kate, all in white, sat on a ha.s.sock pulling a volume from the low book shelf. All this came upon Bertram with a soothing sense which he did not understand in that stage of his development, did not even formulate.

Kate, tripping across the rugs with a lightness which perfectly balanced her weight, greeted him first; Eleanor and Judge Tiffany shook hands with more reserve. And as Bertram settled himself in an arm-chair before the fire, it was the ready Kate who put him at his ease by opening fire of conversation.

"Did I tell you, Mrs. Tiffany, about the restaurant which Mr. Chester found for us last night? such an evening he gave us! Mr. Chester, who is Madame Loisel--you should have seen her, Judge Tiffany--you'd never dine at home again. When these young charms fade, I'm going to marry a French restaurant-keeper and play hostess to the mult.i.tude and be just plump and precious like her. How can you ever get past the counter with her behind it, Mr. Chester?"

"I'm generally hungry--that's how!" said Bertram Chester.

"That's man for you!" responded Kate. "Judge beloved, if you were a young man and Eleanor--I'm too modest to mention myself, you see--were what she'll be at forty, and she were behind a counter, and you before it, would hunger tear you away? Oh dear, it's such a bore to keep one's grammar straight!"

"I ask my wife's permission before giving the answer which is in my heart," said Judge Tiffany.

Eleanor broke into the laugh which followed.

"But I would like to know about Madame Loisel."

"Well, she's certainly a ripe pippin; you've seen that," answered Bertram, his smile on Eleanor. "And I'd like to know what she's saying when she parleys French to the garcons. She's all right if she's feeling right, but I've seen her tear the place up when the service went bad. I guess she's a square and a pretty good fellow!"

"Tell us more about her--" this from Eleanor.

"About her squareness? Well, there was the time Gentle Willie Purdy got drunk. We call him Gentle Willie because he isn't, you know. About three o'clock in the morning, he took the notion it was dinner time and climbed the side gate to the Hotel Ma.r.s.eillaise and pounded at the door. He faded out about then, he says. When he woke up, he was laid out on a couch, with a towel on his head, and Madame was bringing him black coffee. He tried to thank her after he felt better; and what do you think she said? 'Meester Purdy, nevaire, nevaire come to eat in thees place again.' She stayed with it too!"

"Good for her!" said Mrs. Tiffany, reaching for her crewel work.

"Oh, yes," responded Mr. Chester in the uncertain tone of one who gives a.s.sent for politeness without knowing exactly why.

"If I ever depart from the straight and narrow paths and get drunk, may I have Madame Loisel to hold my head," cried Kate.

The talk ran, then, into conventional channels--the news, the latest novel, and the season's picking at the ranch. Judge Tiffany dropped out gradually, and resumed his book; and more and more did Bertram direct his talk, salted and seasoned with his magnetism, toward Eleanor. Kate Waddington, left out of the conversation through three or four exchanges, crossed the room and draped herself on a ha.s.sock at the feet of Judge Tiffany.

"Judge darling," she said in an aside which penetrated to the furthest corner of the room, "I'm going back to my unsympathetic home before tea. Don't you think we're well enough chaperoned to go on with our flirtation just where we left off?"

"Where was I when we were interrupted?" asked Judge Tiffany, leaning forward.

"Twenty-fourth page, fifth chapter," said Kate. "I was just getting you jealous and you were trying not to show it. Mr. Chester--oh excuse me--well, I've broken in now, so I might as well get the reward of my impoliteness--may I use you to make Judge Tiffany jealous?"

"Sure you can!" answered Bertram.

"Oh, he won't do at all!" Kate was addressing Judge Tiffany again.

"He's entirely too eager. Who would be a good rival anyway, Judge adored? Let's create one, like the picture of your future husband in a nickel vaudeville!"

"Eleanor," spoke Mrs. Tiffany, "suppose you show Mr. Chester your end of the house and our garden--or would you like it, Mr. Chester? We're rather proud of the garden."

"I'd like it," answered Bertram; and he rose instantly. Mrs. Tiffany made no move to accompany them; she sat bent over her yarns, her ears open. And she noticed, at the moment when Bertram made that abrupt movement from his chair, how Kate hesitated in the middle of a sentence, as though confused.

The rehea.r.s.ed flirtation between Kate and Judge Tiffany faded into a game of jackstones on the floor.

Mrs. Tiffany heard the double footsteps fade down the hall, heard the garden door open and close. After a short interval, she heard the door again, and the dim footsteps sounded for but a moment. They had turned, evidently, into Eleanor's own living room. Would they stop there, these two, for a talk--yes, her gentle treble, his booming ba.s.s, drifted down the hall. Presently Mrs. Tiffany heard Eleanor's laugh, followed by his. In that instant, she looked at the jackstone players by the hearth. Kate, on the crackle of that laugh, had arrested all motion. A jack which she had tossed in the air, descended with no hand to stop it. For a moment, Kate held that intent pose; then,

"Judge wonderful, I'm a paralytic at times. You for twosies." She swept the jacks towards him with one of her characteristic gestures, free and yet deft.

A bell rang in the outer hall, and the maid entered.

"Miss Waddington is wanted at the telephone," she announced.

Eleanor, when she saw that her visitor had no intention of rejoining the party, commanded him to smoke. He rolled a cigarette, Western fashion, from powdered tobacco and brown paper, and disposed himself in the window-seat, one leg drawn up under him, his big shoulders settled comfortably against the wall. Eleanor began to talk fluently, superficially, with animation. She felt from the first that he was throwing himself against her barriers, trying to reach at once the deeper stages of acquaintance. His direct look seemed both to plead and to command. She outwitted two or three flanking movements before he took advantage of a pause and charged her entrenchments direct.

"I've said it before, but I'm going to keep on. You are pretty."

"Thank you," she replied; and smiled--mainly at the ingenuousness of this, although partly at the contrast between her present view of him and that old memory.

"Oh, it never seems to bother you when I say that," went on Bert Chester, bending his rather large and compelling black-brown eyes upon her. "Some girls would get sore, and some would like it; you never pay any attention. That's one of the ways you're different."

("Heavens--is he making love already--he is sudden!" thought Eleanor with amus.e.m.e.nt.)

"You are, you know. I picked you for different the first time I saw you. I wondered then if you were beautiful--I always knew you had nice eyes--and it isn't so much that you've changed, as that the longer a man looks at you the prettier you are."

"Shall we discuss other things than me?" asked Eleanor.

"Why shouldn't we talk about you? I've never had a chance before--just think, it's the first time ever I saw you alone--even that time on the ranch a bull chaperoned us!" This minor joke, like every play of his spirit, gained a hundred times its own inherent effect by sifting through his personality. She smiled back to his smile at the boyish ripples about his mouth and eyes.

"You see, it means a lot when a girl sticks in a man's mind that way,"

he continued. "Why, I've carried you around right through my Senior year at college and my first year out. So of course, it must mean something."

The open windows of Eleanor's bower looked out upon a bay tree, a little thing awaiting its slaughter--for shade trees might not grow too near the windows in San Francisco. It was flopping its lance-leaves against the panes; puffs of the breeze brought in a suggestion of its pungency. That magic sense, so closely united with memory--it brought back a faint impression upon her. Her very panic at this ghost of old imaginations inspired the inquiry, barbed and shafted with secret malice:

"How many really nice girls have you known in that time?"

Bertram, sitting in considerable comfort on the window seat, flashed his eyes across his shoulder to her.

"Oh, a few in my Senior year, not many this year. What's a man going to do on twelve a week?" She noticed the indelicacy of this, since he spoke in the house of his employer. But the next sentence from him was even more startling:

"The last time I was in love was down in High School at Tulare. She's married a fellow in the salt business now. I guess she was pretty: anyway, her hair was the color of mola.s.ses candy. I wrote a poem to her the first day I saw her."

"A poem?" asked Eleanor.

"You do well to ask that," said Bertram, throwing on one of those literary phrases by which, in the midst of his plain, Anglo-Saxon speech, he was recalling that he was a university man. "It rhymed, after a fashion."

"You don't know how to be in love until you're older," he went on.

("Even that bay scent brings up only wonder, not emotion; and I can laugh at him all the way," she thought. Yet in this tiny triumph Eleanor was not entirely happy. The vision, a little disturbing, a little shameful, but yet sweet, was quite gone.)

"Tell me about this girl with the mola.s.ses hair. She interests me. And a lot about yourself."